Nearly half of US adults consume at least one cup of coffee per day. While some studies have shown that moderate caffeine consumption may have health benefits, too much caffeine can actually have negative side effects to your health and productivity. Restlessness, irritability, elevated heart rate, and interrupted sleep patterns can all result from too much caffeine. Feeling an afternoon slump? Consider one or more of the following natural alternatives before reaching for another cup of coffee or caffeine source.

Stretch – Wake up your muscles and stimulate circulation with a quick stretch.

Get Moving – Like stretching, exercise can help to wake up your body. Even light exercise stimulates endorphins which assists with energy and alertness.

Hydrate – Fatigue can often be associated with dehydration. Consuming a tall glass of ice water will not only keep you hydrated, but can trigger adrenaline and blood flow to your brain.

Snack – Consuming a healthy snack containing natural sugar and carbohydrates including apples, bananas, and oranges can help to stabilize blood sugar. Be sure to pair with a protein source for sustained energy.

Mini Massage – Studies have shown that stimulating pressure points on the body may help to lift energy. Additionally, giving yourself a light neck or shoulder massage may also help to increase alertness while relieving stiffness associated with long term sitting.

Daily stretching can have great physical benefits when paired with exercise or on its own. Stretching can also influence a positive mental outlook, particularly in times of high stress. Taking a moment to breath and do some of the following stretches at home or in the workplace can help to relieve physical tension and improve mental clarity.

Side Stretch – Sitting in a chair or standing, raise hands over head and clasp hands together. Keeping your arms over head, gently lean over to the left until you feel a comfortable stretch on your right side. Slowly return arms back to center and continue the stretch by leaning to the right. Repeat this motion several times to feel a great release in your back.

Shoulder Shrugs – Sitting or standing, move your shoulders up and down a few times taking a few deep breaths in this motion. Continue the stretch by rolling your shoulders back a few times to relieve tension in the neck, shoulders and upper back.

Arm Stretches – An easy stretch to achieve at your desk, begin by crossing one arm over your chest, holding your wrist with the opposite hand. Hold this pose for a few moments taking two to three deep breaths. Repeat this stretch on the opposite arm. Continue the stretch by reaching your arms out in front of you, and clasping your hands together. Slowly arch your upper back and neck forward and back to center.

Neck Stretch – Another great workplace stretch for your neck, start by sitting up straight and slowly bend your neck to the right nearly touching your right shoulder, holding for one to two breaths. Repeat this motion on the right side. Bend deck slowly forward and back several times to complete the stretch.

We’ve all heard the saying “you are what you eat”. While those words may sit quietly in the back of our minds, there is no better time to bring them to life than during work hours. What we eat can have a tremendous influence on overall performance during the day. Making healthy and consistent choices, especially at work, helps to maintain energy and focus which may ultimately reduce the risk of stress and fatigue. Check out our quick guide below to be happy, healthy, and hunger free!

Be Proactive: Chances are when your stomach is growling, your mood and energy levels are at an all time low. Eating smaller, more consistent meals throughout the day will help to sustain glucose levels, helping to keep you focused and alert. Avoid burn out by eating before you’re hungry. For some people, this might mean consuming a light snack every 2-3 hours and a full meal every 5 hours throughout the day.

Brown Bag It: Bringing healthy snacks to work is a great way to curb hunger and stay consistent with good food choices. This is especially helpful for those with busy schedules, who may be more likely to make poor choices in a pinch. Aim to provide yourself with a combination of non-processed carbohydrates, protein, fruit or vegetables and healthy fats. Doing so will give your body the right amount of protein, fiber and antioxidants that will not only help to keep you fuller, longer, but help to maintain productive energy and a positive mood.

Stay Hydrated: Just as important as the food we eat. Staying hydrated allows our muscles, joints, and organs to function properly. Dehydration can cause our minds and bodies to slow down, making it difficult to focus or feel well during work. Drinking water instead of alternative beverages will also help to cut unneccesary sugars and keep energy levels sustained. Try substituting a glass of water instead of a mid-day soda or coffee which can be packed with simple sugars and lead to afternoon crash.

Be fit and have a healthier body even at work! Here are some recommended office exercises you can do at the office.

Every one of us wants to be healthy and physically fit. And who wouldn’t right? We all want to feel better and have a longer life in health. But, one can’t achieve such a healthy body with a weak immune system. We can build this up by having a healthy lifestyle, eating healthy food, having a healthy diet, and regular exercise. But most of the time, it’s the latter that we always find hard to have mostly because of those busy working schedules and office work needed to earn a living. But there’s a workaround with this situation, and despite our hours being spent in the office, having a regular exercise is still achievable with some office exercises we can do during break time or while working. Nothing will absolutely hinder you from keeping a healthy lifestyle, definitely not work!

Learn about these exercises and try hitting two birds in one stone: Or should we say staying healthy while making a living. Now that’s a healthy living, right?

Take the stairs instead of riding elevators or escalators– If your office isn’t on the ground floor, start taking stairs instead of taking the usual elevator ride you do every day. It can be a good cardio exercise, and it makes your legs stronger.

Turn waiting time into calf- strengthening time– If you are waiting for copies to print or photocopy, instead of standing you transform it into an office exercise by lifting your heels up and down until you feel a mild but satisfying burn in your calves.

Wrist Stretch– It is important for your wrist and fingers to maintain its blood circulation from exhaust typing. You can do a simple stretch extending an arm in front, palm up, and grabbing the fingers with other hand. Gently pull the fingers towards you so that the fingers will be stretched.

Chair Squat– Let’s get that painful back exercised! Lift up until your hips are just hovering over the chair, arms out of balance. Hold for 2-3 seconds and stand all the way up.

Side Bends– Let’s get your abdominal muscle get exercised, too! Hold a water bottle in both hands and stretch it up over the head, arms straight. Bend towards the left (or right and vice versa) as far as you can to contract the abs.These may be just simple stretches and unnoticeable type of exercises, but you’ll be surprised on how they help your body stay in form before, during, and on your way to finish work. That’s easy, right?

Wake up. Fix the beddings. Take a bath. Eat Breakfast. Prepare for work then leave. This is the typical scenario of an employee working on a day shift. Unfortunately, because time is so swift to pass after waking up in the morning, this falls as a daily routine. Have you forgotten something? Yes, a morning body stretching. Exercises at the office are not that hard to perform even if an employee is in front of his desk and forgot to exercise at home.

Exercise is an activity of a body that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness. This is being performed to strengthen some parts of a human’s body and boost the immune system. Below are some tips and exercises that a worker can do in the office.

1. Stretching: It involves the wrist and arms that can be done even when you are sitting in your chair. You can stretch your wrist, forearm, and lower back. In stretching your wrist, extend your arm in front, palm up and grab the fingers with other hand. Pull your fingers towards you to stretch the forearm and hold it for 20-30mins, and then do this on the other side.

2. Squatting: You can do the chair squatting or one-leg squat. These exercises at the office can help the hip, arms and feet in balance. Just make sure that your chair is stable while squatting. While sitting, you just have to lift up until your hips are hovering over the chair and arms out for balance. Hold these 2-3 seconds, stand all the way up and repeat the process for 16 repetitions.

3. Breathing: 5-10 reps breathing from lower rib cage, from mid-rib cage and from upper rib cage. While sitting upright in the chair with head retracted back, exhale forcefully; breathe out as much air as you can.

4. Squeezing: This is the straight-arm squeeze. Simply sit up straight on edge of chair with feet and legs together, abs engaged, arms extended behind you and palms in. Next is squeezing the arms in against chair back then release. Do 10 repetitions and on last squeeze, move the arms up and down 1 inch and repeat.

Now, who says that there are no exercises at the office while you are busy working? You should try these steps and stay fit all day!

The amount of hours spent sleeping greatly affects one’s attitude towards work. These days, less and less employees get to enjoy an ample enough of sleep, thus resulting to more and more unhappy employees.

It’s not really just the numbers of hours that make a good sleep, but the quality of sleep. And what’s the secret to a better sleeping habit? It has something to do with avoiding electronics. Those on the bed email checking, stock market last looks, and even checking on your social media profiles at bed greatly affects your sleep and takes up an hour or so of sleep. Avoid it, sleep more. That simple.

Breaking a sweat
Work related exercise can come from the most common ways of everyday routine. Longer walks from the parking spot to the office are one way to get an exercise on the way to work. But if you’re not having much exercise working, it might be great to consider yoga or Pilates, walking or slight jogs after work, sports of any kind, and maybe dance classes may be a great way to have exercise to compliment work.

Family Time
Though a lot of people have it unnoticed, family time or time spent with significant others greatly affect ones happiness. A rich personal life makes a happier employee, as well as having positive relationships with friends or significant others brings forth improvement in your health and reduce loneliness that brings work related stress.

Family problems do affect ones state of mind, and can keep you nightly, causing further sleeping problems.

Eating Healthier
To make it short, less junk food makes a happier self. Healthier eating habits call for a healthier you. And this goes true in the working place.

Less Alcohol
As with any everyday life, taking less alcohol makes for a healthier body. Weekend drinking may cause one to be less effective at work at the start of the week. Though it has been often said that occasional drinking does have some bodily benefits (stress reliever or a more relaxed state of mind), most drinking sessions often leads past the point of healthier benefits. And in most cases, drinking leads to lesser sleeping time.

With these in mind, I hope you’ll get to understand that a having a happier job doesn’t always entails quitting one where you are unhappy of, but looking into some internal factors which may be tweaked to achieve the happy working attitude one needs.

We experience a lot of changes as we get older. For those who are planning to work until their retirement age will definitely have to keep up with a lot of things. We will move slower, eat lesser, we will become a bit physically inactive and the hardest part is we will forget a lot of things! It’s unavoidable and pretty hard to accept. It is possible for us to retain a pretty good memory even as we age. We must remember that being forgetful plus old age can put our job on the line.

Get enough sleep as much as you can. We can’t deny that there are days that we really have to stay late to beat a deadline or to attend work-related occasions. If we constantly deprive ourselves with sleep, the tendency is our brain will not function in its full capacity.

Eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. The most common quality in this type of food is what we call “antioxidants”. Antioxidants protect our brain from free radicals which cause damage to our brain.

Don’t clog up your circulation with fats and plaques. This will decrease the blood flow to your brain and will result to cognitive impairment.

Lastly, wine has been proven to help improve memory and cognition. But take note that wine should be taken in moderation. A glass for women and 2 glasses for men daily is perfect. Because of its vasodilating capabilities and with its resrsevatrol contents, wine increases blood supply to our brain thus preventing the most common disease related to old age, Alzheimer’s.

If you think you need help from a health professional, trust your instinct. Wellness and prevention is better that cure.

We can’t prevent stress at work. What we can do is to maintain a specific level of anxiety as much as possible. A normal anxiety level can be helpful in different ways. It slightly increases our respiration which can be helpful in taking in more oxygen to our brain. It makes us alert and very responsive. Anxiety about an upcoming deadline can make us work harder and be keen to details.

How do we maintain a normal level of anxiety whenever we face something new, a bit difficult task or a deadline? Slow and deep breathing is very helpful. If you are having a hard time controlling your breathing pattern, stop whatever you are doing and just close your eyes to focus.

Do this even for a minute and you will immediately feel relaxed. Another thing that we can do is to keep a to-do list. Having our own to-do list can help us prioritize and keep track of our work progress. It’s an OC kind of way which is a good thing. Having a bit of this attitude at work is beneficial. There is no denying that cramming is stressing and can eventually lead you to losing your job. There is another way to maintain a normal level anxiety or totally relieve stress at work. Get enough sleep. As we get old our duration of sleep changes. An adult must have a minimum of 6 hours sleep and a maximum of 8-10 hours. Take note that prolonged sleep can also mean a person could have an underlying health problem. If we get enough sleep, chances of a happy day is high. We will be able to respond positively to almost anything in our day’s work and we will accept every task as a challenge rather than a burden.

There is so much to do around the office. From the moment we log in up to the last second of our shifts. We spend five or six days a week in the office. It doesn’t matter how we do our jobs, as long as it gets done.

When we do a lot of things, time flies so fast and we hardly feel tired not until we make our way home. In every physical task that we do, there is a proper body mechanics that we should follow. Here are common office tasks that require a proper body mechanics. These tasks are usually not considered to be important. But it’s time to think again.

Let’s start out with 3 simple things that we usually experience in the office. You’ll be surprised at how easy these tasks are.

Sitting. Make sure that the level of the chair that you are using is just right for the height of your office desk. This will prevent you from slouching that will result to back pain. Sit straight and relax while breathing normally. Always make sure that your shoulder muscle is not tensed. You can fix that by consciously relaxing it. This can also be done to other muscle groups.

Lifting. Always check the weight of the object you are lifting. Maintain a wide base by keeping your feet apart to prevent the possibility of slipping. Bend your knees and hold the object as close as possible to you and slowly lift the object up. It Is always safe to ask for help or use a device that can assist in prevent yourself from having a back injury.

Picking up fallen objects (papers, ball pen, etc.). It is better to bend your knees instead of just bending your back forward to pick up any fallen objects.

Repetition can help you build a habit. Repeat the things that can cause good things to you. Influence your colleagues to practice good body mechanics too!

Office work is not really a glam job. We usually say office work is much better than plumbing, carpentry, repair and maintenance. In the office, we get to avoid the heat of the sun, have our own space or table in the office with matching picture of our family or cute dog, have free coffee from the pantry and proudly wear corporate attires. So what are the reasons to be tired and exhausted?

One of the main reasons is sitting. According to studies, prolonged sitting can cause increased LDL cholesterol also known as bad cholesterol. This is our one way ticket to heart problems and other circulatory diseases such as Atherosclerosis and Ischemia.

Effect on bones. Prolonged sitting is bad. Prolonged sitting and slouching is worse. Slouching can strain our neck and cervical vertebrae. When we slouch our spine is pressed unevenly which affects the surrounding tendons and ligaments. One bone problem that we don’t want to have is Osteoporosis.

What do we do?

Move from time to time. This will improve blood circulation in our body thus preventing hypertension and circulatory problems. We can also do a 3-minute stretching starting from head to toe. One more exercise that is really effective is standing up from sitting without any hand support. You can do this repetitively for one minute every day. Lastly, if your boss will allow you to bring an exercise ball, replace your office chair with it. Exercise ball can help us improve our posture and tone our abs.